U.S. Jewish prof calls Gaza treatment ‘Holocaust

July 13, 2007 9:00am

A U.S. Jewish law professor justified comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Holocaust.

“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?” asked Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of law at Princeton University and a visiting professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara in an article published this week in the online “Palestine Chronicle.” “I think not.”

Falk cites Israel’s isolation of the Gaza Strip now that it is under the control of Hamas, saying it is consistent with Israel’s occupation. “Israel is currently stiffening the boycott on economic relations that has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation,” he says. “This set of policies, carried on for more than four decades, has imposed a sub-human existence on a people that have been repeatedly and systematically made the target of a variety of severe forms of collective punishment.”

Israel will not deal with Hamas until it renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel’s existence. However, it is allowing humanitarian assistance to reach the area. Israel is also easing conditions on Palestinians in the West Bank.

“To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole,” Falk says. “It is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of ‘never again.'”